Ripening

The Lady of Shallot, sitting in her ivory tower.
Celia, bored with the droning voice gazed out of the window and dreamt of being free of school lessons, curriculum and timetables. Tennyson be damned. The reprimand for daydreaming came swiftly, and relieved to be outside the stuffy classroom, Celia stood yet again in the dusty corridor. Staring down other pupils lounging against the buff coloured walls, she took out her jotter.
She enjoyed composing Haiku, her spikey words like wooden sticks, full of venom and a ripening cynicism which she decided would be a good style to cultivate.
In her mind there was a wan awakening, growing like a spreading purple bruise.
Her grandmother’s house was doomed for demolition in an urban blush of town planning and redevelopment. Celia, with a resolve that took her by surprise, began to fray away the wool from her school scarf as she abruptly headed off, down the corridor, leaving a tell tale track.
Intent on grandmother’s house, she needed to rescue certain childhood memories before they were swept away with the bulldozer’s rubble. She knew that the world shimmers under its scarf like a forked tongue of haiku, and it was spreading through her bones like truth.
Awaiting her would be strawberries and cream in the sunshine, she would think of that, and not the sharp and vicious fear that so readily overtakes all joy.

The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule